‘Lord Split Me Open’: The raw art of Cameron Patricia Downey
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Artist Cameron Patricia Downey stands in front of an old leather couch that she sawed in half, rotated 90 degrees from its intended use, and bolted to a wall.
“It kind of looks like an open-face sandwich,” she says as shredded leather, memory foam, metal springs and wood frame her face.
Fixed to the gallery wall to the left is a glass side table with a glowing lamp plugged into the ceiling. Hanging between the couch halves, lit by red lights, is a screen print of her grandmother and brother on glass; it casts shadows on the wall like stained glass.
The scene is bizarre and nostalgic, like an old friend’s living room in a dream.
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“This is all, for me, musing on memory and archive and just the things we leave behind as fact and fiction,” says Downey, who uses both she and they pronouns.
The gravity-defying artwork is called “Lord Split Me Open,” which also happens to be the name of the show — her first-ever solo exhibition — at the Hair and Nails gallery in Minneapolis. In her artist statement, Downey says her work “strives to archive, unfurl, make-altar-of and bring fantasy to the Blues of Black life and relation.”
Artist Ryan Fontaine, who runs the gallery with dancer-choreographer Kristin Van Loon, says Downey’s work is always a bit ambiguous. The gallery has been working with Downey since 2019, when they showed some of her work in Brooklyn, New York.
“Everything is skewed a little,” Fontaine says of her work, “to take us out of what is the expected thing that we take for granted.”
The solo show at Hair and Nails, Downey says, has given her the opportunity to say all the things she’s been wanting to say.
“I’m thinking about memory and myth and cutting things open, like the couch,” Downey says, laughing. And “basically just honoring all the mediums that I’ve been loving, exploring, over the past few years.”
Downey is based in north Minneapolis where, as a teen, she got her “first and foundational arts education” at Juxtaposition Arts under the tutelage of artists Caroline Kent and Nate Young.
Downey now teaches contemporary art there. She is also a current artist in residence at Second Shift Studio Space in East St. Paul and the Moving Image resident artist at the Walker Art Center, where she’s been studying the center’s film collection and curating playlists.
The Walker also recently acquired “Hymn of Dust,” a 2018 “experimental horror/fashion” VHS film Downey made with collaborators Ize Commers, M Jamison and Cooper Felien. As the Walker describes it, “Hymn of Dust” features “adorned youth in north Minneapolis’ sculptural, toxic metal wasteland along the Mississippi River.”
A few weeks after the murder of George Floyd, Hair and Nails projected the film in the front yard of the gallery space every weekend night for rest of the summer. It was on view for “Holding Space,” a public installation Downey curated.
At the time, Downey said of the show: “This event exists in the midst of, because of and for the revolutionary actions that hold Minneapolis close. There is no more exigent a time for tender, visionary, black, queer art than this moment.”
Downey calls herself an “anti-disciplinary” artist and environmental scientist (she graduated from Columbia University in 2021 with concentrations in both areas), and she often blurs the lines between mediums, including film, photography, printmaking, sculpture or readymades.
Her art speaks in a language of repetition and the texture of found objects, illustrated by many pieces in the show.
For the work “It is a learned application without reason or motive except that it is God” (2023), she uses dozens of white tank tops (here, the artist calls them “white beaters”) to frame a VHS film projection. With “Performer” (2023), a clump of black synthetic wigs hangs on the wall creating a glossy pattern, at once glam and grotesque.
With “613 Fountain” (2023), Downey screen printed photos onto massive ribbons of cut-up mattress, gathered and hung into what could be the train of a wedding dress.
“It's because of places like this where they are artist-run, you get to experiment,” Downey says. “You’re working sort of hand in hand to make the best show possible. It's like a co-investment that I think is really special.”
“Lord Split Me Open” runs through May 28. Downey will also conclude her Walker residency with a May 25 public playlist event.
